Boxer: Shutdown no laughing matter

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) didn’t find the lighthearted take on the government shutdown from some of her GOP committee colleagues very funny.

On Tuesday, Republicans with the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee released a “Top 10” list of reasons the shutdown “isn’t all that bad.”

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On Wednesday, Boxer issued her own list, charging that the government shutdown “is harmful to the American public, puts people’s livelihoods at risk and is hurting the nation’s economy.” She cited halted Environmental Protection Agency inspections and cleanups, dangers to worker safety, delays to permits and local economies devastated by closed public lands that cater to recreational tourism.

And Democratic Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland noted that a wildlife refuge in his home state was closed “during one of the most important economic seasons for the Eastern Shore. That’s affecting jobs. It’s affecting private-sector jobs. And the longer this shutdown goes forward, the more harm it can cause our country.”

Boxer’s list looks very different than the one from her GOP colleagues, who cheered the closure of the EPA, which they said would put a stop to arbitrary regulations, red tape and faulty science.

A shuttered EPA is no boon to the U.S., she said, especially since inspectors in every state have been furloughed.

“The cops on the beat aren’t on the job,” she said at a press conference Wednesday.

Cleanup has been delayed at 505 Superfund sites in 47 states. “That means that families living near these toxic waste sites, which are contaminated with toxic brews like arsenic, benzene, lead and mercury, have to continue to worry that their children will get cancer or will suffer injury to their brain and other vital organs,” she said.

EPA pesticide inspectors are off the job, and imported pesticides are locked up at ports, where they are prohibited from being distributed. Some agriculture processing plants could shut down if that doesn’t change, Boxer said she had been told.

Investigations of chemical explosions are on hold while only three of the 40 Chemical Safety Board employees are still on the job, and the administration has had to halt efforts to improve safety and security at chemical facilities, Boxer said.

And she cited the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, where about 92 percent of employees are off the job — about 3,600 people. NRC has canceled public meetings, halted some licensing and delayed emergency preparation exercises.

Even Congress made the list: Boxer lamented the delay for the Water Resources Development Act — an Army Corps of Engineers infrastructure bill that passed the Senate but has been held up in the House, where it was expected to move last week.

Nationwide, Army Corps permits are on hold, delaying construction of roads, bridges, houses and other businesses, Boxer charged, including 650 pending actions in just one of the Corps’ 38 districts.

“Because the employees who review these applications have been furloughed, the process has been stopped dead in its tracks,” she said.

“The Army Corps is critical to just about every economic project involving the government,” Cardin said. “Economic recovery has been put on hold as a result of the shutdown, which has cost this economy terribly.”

The Corps’ recreational facilities, such as campgrounds and boat ramps, have been closed. The Corps has estimated that cost 8.5 million visits in the first 10 days of the shutdown, Boxer said. The same goes for the nation’s 561 closed national wildlife refuges, Boxer said.

In both cases, local businesses around the recreational areas are suffering without customers. In some areas of the country, hunters and fishermen are being turned away from wildlife refuges managed by the government.

Alongside Cardin, Boxer and Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii) are affected citizens, including Susan Meredith, who owns a “pedal and paddle” company near the Blackwater refuge in Dorchester County, Md. In the months before the shutdown, she earned an average of $1,500 a weekend. But the Saturday after the shutdown her business made just $140. “This is the peak season for us right now, … and nobody’s coming because” the refuge is closed, Meredith said.

Meredith urged people to stop by a town near a state park to buy gas or eat at a restaurant.

“It would be an understatement of colossal proportions to say that the government shutdown has impacted our industry negatively. Our companies depend on their consumers being able to access public lands,” said Kirk Bailey, vice president of government affairs at the Outdoor Industry Association, which represents about 4,000 companies.

That “chilling in consumer activity … will ripple far beyond these few weeks,” he said, adding, and drag into the holiday season, ultimately putting losses for the industry in the hundreds of million of dollars.